


Never Mind the Wreckers

by ayellowbirds



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:19:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayellowbirds/pseuds/ayellowbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skyfall left behind a lot of problems, the kind of problems you usually call in the big guns to deal with. But the big guns are busy elsewhere—time to scrape the bottom of the barrel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Something thrown together a bit quickly in one day, based on http://ayellowbirds.tumblr.com/post/135226652718/the-wreckers-are-busy-who-do-you-send  
> I'll try to actually continue this one. Fireball is mostly an original character, Copca is entirely new. Thanks to Umar for beta reading.

A datapad settled on the table.

“I could keep reading this report,” Flatfoot said, “or you could summarize.”

Fireball shifted in her seat. She was increasingly unsure if approaching the Cybertron Security Force had been the best course of action. It had seemed like a good idea at first, but now—seated on a too-small and likely deliberately uncomfortable chair across an imposingly large table from officers whose red and purple badges carried all the stern distrust that the faceplates she couldn’t look at were probably bearing—she felt like she might have rushed into things. Especially with the Badgeless that she could see in the corner of the room, obviously standing so as to be visible but not _too_ visible.

“Well, a month ago, I got a notification to come pick up some things that had belonged to Skyfall,” she said. “He’s—he was my spark twin. Next of kin, so… personal effects, what hadn’t been seized by High Command.”

“Ah, yes,” remarked the Decepticon seated beside Flatfoot, looking over a datapad of his own. “The weapon designer, from Kimia? A rather notorious case, that. But, it’s been years since his death. Why the delay?”

“I was told that, considering the evidence that came up in, well, his…” Fireball hesitated, a hand unconsciously moving over her chest. Her spark casing felt very thin, suddenly. “They wanted to go over everything carefully, and make sure nothing had been missed. Nothing dangerous, or….”

“Traitorous,” finished Clamp Down, the other Autobot present. Fireball looked up, and did not like the expression she saw on his face. She nodded.

“So, in all that time,” Flatfoot said, finger on the datapad before him, “how’d they miss what you found in one month?”

“Like I said,” she replied, “he was my spark twin. Whether I like it or not, he, well, I knew him better than anyone else, and he knew me better. Enough to get under my plating. Maybe enough that he wanted me to find this, I don’t know.”

The Decepticon—Fireball thought his name was Copca, or something like that—adopted a grim smirk. “More likely he overestimated his own cleverness,” he suggested. “I reviewed some of the evaluations from that whole matter. Dreadful business, the way he did himself in. But, indicative of quite the ego, as well.”

Fireball couldn’t deny the truth of that. If anything, she’d have put it less charitably.

“So, going through your late spark-twin’s remaining possessions,” Flatfoot prodded, “you found, what?”

“Photographs, souvenirs, from trips to Veras Centralus,” she replied.

“Varus?” Flatfoot asked, at the same time Clamp Down said, “Verus?”

“No, Veras,” Fireball corrected. It was an easy mistake to make. “The photos, the trinkets, well, they looked normal, sure. But, Skyfall and normal vacations didn’t mix. He _hated_ that kind of thing. It was all, well, this might sound kind of paranoid, but it was all the kind of thing that someone trying to _fake_ being on vacation would do.”

“So, he didn’t actually go there?” Copca guessed.

Fireball shook her head. “No, he was there. But the photos don’t match up with the places on Veras he said he was visiting. So, well, I got kind of curious, and I have this friend, one of the Camiens? She’s really good with maps and data, so I asked her to help me figure out where he was.”

“Hmph, yes.” Clamp Down looked to his own datapad, switching pages a couple times. “You determined he was visiting an unsettled region. Near enough to the tourist sites that he could pick up some trinkets on the way in or out, but….”

“Not _known_ to be settled, no,” Fireball said. “And I contacted the transit authority. Since I’m immediate family, and he’s deceased, they sent me his records. It shows he departed Veras Centralus with luggage of equal weight to when he arrived.”

There was a moment of silence.

Flatfoot seemed about to speak, when Copca let out an, “Ah.”

“What?” Flatfoot asked, turning to his Decepticon colleague. “What’s so strange about that?”

“Now, now,” Copca said, a little smug. “Weren’t you in mechaforensics? It does seem quite strange that his luggage would weigh the same on arrival and departure, if he picked up souvenirs.”

It was Flatfoot’s turn to shift uncomfortably in his seat.

“Maybe he brought fuel with him, snacks for the trip. Happened to be about the same weight he left with,” he ventured, though he didn’t seem confident in the idea.

“The weight records are exact to the thousandth decimal place,” Fireball said. “And it happened on more than one trip. And the souvenirs, well….”

She scratched at her faceplate.

“They’re identical. All the exact same statue. He had maybe half a dozen of them, with different dated serial numbers on the base. I think,” she said, a little less certain now that she was theorizing, “that he brought in something _disguised_ as one of the statues. One of the records says that he declared his intention to return an item he’d purchased on a previous trip, when asked about his business there.”

More silence. Glances exchanged. Copca looked to Flatfoot and Clamp Down, spreading his hands in a ‘well, there it is,’ sort of gesture. Flatfoot’s face screwed up in a grimace, and Clamp Down simply shook his head.

A moment more of inscrutable facial expressions and gestures Fireball couldn’t read—and what looked like some under-the-table chirolinguistics—and Flatfoot turned to face Fireball.

“It’s all very interesting,” he said, “but I’m afraid it simply isn’t enough to merit further investigation. The matter of Skyfall’s crimes was thoroughly investigated, by professionals.”

Now Copca spoke, as he closed the file on his own datapad. “Thank you for your time, but we will not be pursuing this matter any further. I suggest you see about grief counselling.”

“I… what?” Fireball would have gaped if she had a mouth.

“Sometimes the loss of kin—elective or otherwise—can make one see danger where there is none,” the Decepticon explained, rising from his seat as Flatfoot and Clamp Down did the same. He began entering something on his datapad, clearly more focused on the screen than on Fireball’s rapidly mounting incredulity. “Now, we have some other matters to attend to, but I’m going to schedule you for a meeting tomorrow at my office. I have some colleagues, Autobot and NAIL therapists, who may be of some assistance.”

Fireball didn’t know what to say. “I—well, thank you.”

Copca waved farewell over his shoulder, and the three security officials exited the room. For a moment, Fireball was alone, before the sound of one of the Badgeless shifting in place startled her. She jumped up, and made her own way out to the lobby.

Not too many minutes later, she was in one of the quieter bars, a comm open to the only person she felt might understand where she was going with all of this.

“They didn’t even offer to look into it more?” Windmill whistled, making the audio crackle. “I thought at least they’d, you know, give you some false hope.”

“I guess,” Fireball sighed. “The real sting is that the Con asked me to come by so he could point me to a counselor. Like I wasn’t already over—it’s not like Sky and me, it’s not as if we had any connection except for being spark twins.”

“Yeah, but, you know….” Windmill began, but the audio trailed into empty air while Fireball nursed her engex.

“Well, what?” she probed.

“You kind of have a history of acting on your feelings,” Windmill said. “There was the whole monoform thing, and then when you found out about the Camiens, also, too. Maybe you should talk this out with someone, get an outside perspective on how your feelings might have—”

Fireball cut the call.

She stared into her glass. It was true, she’d acted on her feelings about some important things in life. But they were things where feelings were the important factor. Taking out her transformation cog had _felt_ right, and it still did. The feeling of transformation had nauseated her all her life up to that point. And when contact was established with the colony world of Caminus, she’d visited one of their surgical engineers for a procedure to correct a more significant flaw in her body, one that more than a few other Cybertronians had likewise come to understand explained the ache and discomfort they had felt for centuries, even millennia of life.

 **Too damn right** , she acted on feelings.

But when it came to Skyfall, the feelings weren’t about wanting closure, or justice. Her brother had gotten what he’d deserved. He was always an awful person, even before he broke off contact with her. It had been a relief, really, and had allowed her to focus on her own work. Sometimes, she worried that without her own engineering to copy, he was stealing the products of someone else’s labor.

That worry had turned out to be true, revealed to hundreds and hundreds of subscribers to “Wreckers: Declassified” datalogues. A subscriber herself, she’d made a point of avoiding speaking to anyone for a few weeks after the final message ‘Fisitron’ had sent out. She spent most of that time altering her appearance so that the resemblance to her spark-twin was less pronounced. She’d even made a point to remove mention of him from her Autopedia entry, and herself from his.

“I don’t care about Skyfall,” she said into her glass. “Just about making sure he’s not _still_ hurting anyone.”

The next day, she repeated exactly those words, standing in the doorway to Copca’s office. Her fists were balled up at her sides, and she was sure her visor was flashing. She might have still been over-energized. She might have spent as much of the time between her dismissal and her return to the CSF building as possible nursing one beverage or another, without offlining. She might have been feeling defensive and ready to tell off the smug, intellectual Decepticon who liked to act like millions of years of warfare could just be waved off and he could offer her friendly advice on her mental state.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Copca said, smiling earnestly. “Let’s make sure of that.”

She might not have been remotely prepared to hear him say that.

She hadn’t let her optics focus when she entered the room, so she hadn’t processed until he spoke that Copca was not alone. Seated kitty-corner from him, Clamp Down was looking much more amiable.

“You—what?” Fireball sputtered.

She stepped in, and the door shut behind her.

“We couldn’t really talk much about it with the Badgeless hanging around,” Clamp Down said, rising to offer a handshake. “Not to mention old Dragfeet.”

“You—he—I?” Fireball continued to fail to speak even half sentences as she accepted the handshake. Clamp Down’s grip completely eclipsed hers. He guided her into a seat.

“For whatever reason, and who knows whose oversight, we’ve been saddled with a colleague with a history of corruption that even my own past commanders would have balked at,” said Copca. “We try to put on a good show of being useless for him, and Starscream’s goons.”

“And the fact of the matter is, we believe you,” added Clamp Down. Now, he looked very pointedly at Copca. “More than that, we have some evidence on top of what you provided us.”

“Well, yes,” Copca sighed. He steepled his fingers and gazed over them at Fireball, creating a gap in his visor. “Prior to the end of the war, I was in Decepticon Psy-Ops. I specialized in treating personality disorders related to gestalt technology, plus a little minor medical care; the various attempts at creating viable combiners produced quite a few cases of severe trauma, among other issues. In that time, I was shuffled from one base to another….”  
He paused while Clamp Down passed a datapad to Fireball, displaying a map of a very familiar region of uninhabited land. However, this map had a clear marker showing that it _was_ inhabited.

“...including Veras Centralus,” he finished. “A few months ago, I met with an old comrade from there, who confided in me that the base was still in operation as a research facility, distributing weapons developments to some of the Decepticon cells who remain hostile. He was, hrm. He was not in the best state of mind, but more notably, his frame showed signs of very distinctive damage. As if his plating had been made brittle, and shattered like so much glass. The angle of it suggested a weapons misfire.”

“The souvenir statues you said your brother brought back,” Clamp Down said, prodding a button on the datapad and bringing up an image of a vaguely familiar cannister, along with figures for its exact dimensions. “Would you say that they were about the same dimensions as one of these?”  
Fireball reviewed it for a moment. “Yes, well, exactly so. I’d say, plus a bit of coating to make it look like the First Five Memorial. This is…?”  
She recognized it just as Clamp Down and Copca nodded.

“Cold phosphex,” Clamp Down replied. “We now believe Skyfall was smuggling samples to the Decepticons.”

“That’s…” Fireball’s gaze went up and over to Copca. “But why do you care?”

He smiled thinly, in a way that carried a deep sadness.

“Not every Decepticon approved of what those above us were doing,” he replied, his voice a bit softer than before. “I kept the badge because… I suppose because I thought I could make more of a difference keeping my head low, than if I ran off and wound up in the hands of the DJD. And if the people at the facility on Veras Centralus have their hands on materials from Kimia, it could start things down the wrong path all over again.”

“Copca’s basically an Autobot,” Clamp Down explained, but his colleague’s expression soured.

“It was never as simple as that,” he replied, his hands flattening down onto the desk.

“Sure, sure,” Clamp Down waved it off. “We can have this debate again later, the important thing is: Fireball, how would you feel about going to Veras Centralus yourself?”

She stared. He might as well have asked how she felt about becoming the next bearer of the Matrix, or facing off against a horde of Sparkeaters.

“I came to _you_ , didn’t I?” she asked.

“Yes, you did,” said Copca. “And that shows excellent initiative and a good investigative ability. We’re limited, here. We can investigate matters on Cybertron, and if something relates to offworld activity, we can pass that over to the relevant department. But we can’t go flying off to look into these things ourselves.”

“...and you don’t trust the people who can,” she guessed. “But why send me? It sounds pretty, well, dangerous. There must be someone else. Like, the Wreckers, or the Monsterbots.”

“Neither of which are anywhere near Cybertron,” Clamp Down replied.

“Nor are we in a position to request their help,” added Copca. “We do know some others who might be able to provide the necessary skills and firepower. But foremost, we think that you should go, because you know weapons engineering.”

Clamp Down tapped the datapad again, showing a diagram marked RESEARCH FACILITY 083. It was dated over a decade ago.

“According to our information, the base at Veras Centralus is for the sole purpose of designing weapons, including reverse-engineering Autobot developments. If Skyfall handed cold phosphex over to the people there, he may have given them more. We need someone with optics for his work, who knows Autobot military engineering, and can identify what needs to be seized or destroyed. Ideally, more than one set of optics,” he said. Copca nodded.

“We can arrange for you to get flight clearance, and smooth things over as far as keeping the wrong people from looking too closely at what you’re doing,” the perhaps former Decepticon noted, “but we can’t get too involved ourselves, especially not as far as leading things. If anything goes wrong, we need deniability, or _a lot more_ will go wrong, very fast.”

“And if things go right?” Fireball asked, hoping that that wasn’t too much of a longshot.

“Then you’ll be noted as having engaged in a rightful act of repossession of materials illegally delivered or stolen during wartime,” said Copca. “Assuming that you return those items to the proper authorities, or, failing that, arrange for the guaranteed destruction thereof.”

“We’ve been expecting a circumstance like this,” Clamp Down added. “With all the Decepticons still out there, some arrangements have been made.”

“It’s surprisingly easy to get Starscream to sign off on things,” Copca said.


	2. Working Undercover for the Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team starts to come together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Umar and Cabooceratops for beta-reading <3

“...from the space bridge, signing off. Back to you, Circuit!” finished Cloudraker, making the ‘cut’ gesture to his cameramech, Artfire. As soon as the light went off, his posture relaxed.

Of course, for Cloudraker, a _relaxed_ posture meant going from energetic and genial, to tight and contained. He’d taken to work as a reporter with the Iacon Communication Service after a therapy session had led to Rung noting that the young Autobot’s claustrophobia and anxiety about interacting with others seemed to vanish when he was aware he was being recorded. Rung had suggested the work as a way to get more accustomed to being in a crowd instead of trying to fly away from everything, reasoning that, even if Cloudraker’s on-camera persona was an act, it could also be a way to build up the person behind the mask.

The psychotherapist had found his way off-planet shortly after that, and Cloudraker still wasn’t sure whether he wanted to join him, or deck him.

The work was thrilling, involved meeting strange and exciting new people and going places he’d never been. Even just facing the camera sent his fuel pump into faster cycles, since he was acutely aware that the optic behind the lens was that of a former sniper. He always felt more like he was in the crosshairs when Artfire was filming, making him feel endangered even in spite of the close bond he had developed over the deca-cycles spent partnered with the larger mech. All of that might have worked wonders for his younger brother. But Cloudraker was _not_ Fastlane.

“Big bro, hey!” yelled an identical voice to his own. _Speak of Mortilus_ , Cloudraker thought, as he turned to wave at his mirror image. Every instinct, every daemon in his brain module was screaming at him to keep turning and flee through the open space bridge behind him, to take to alien skies and just keep going. As always—well, as much as he usually managed, at least—he resisted the urge.

Where Cloudraker had gotten into reporting to try and improve himself, Fastlane had taken to police work for more of the same. Even having gotten rid of their Autobot badges to become NAILs on a now _mostly_ peaceful Cybertron, Fastlane still confided that he missed the drama and action of the war. How someone like that was split from his own spark, Cloudraker could only guess. Sometimes, in dark moments, he wondered if he was meant to be outgoing and bold, and that all of that had been stolen from him when he was just a spark, the division artificially induced.

“Fastlane, hi,” he managed, waving back. “What brings you here?”

The young cop managed to swing his own wave around into an over-the-shoulder hug. Younger he might be, but except for a few small cues of his ground-based vehicle mode, Fastlane was physically identical to Cloudraker, and matched his height exactly. This meant that his gesture of affection forced Cloudraker to hunch over.

“What, I can’t come visit my one and only brother while he’s working? Ouch, that hurts,” Fastlane joked, and then, to Cloudraker’s surprise, leaned in closer. Whispering, he said, “actually, I have something kind of hush-hush, officially unofficial police business to talk to you about. Got a klik?”

As Cloudraker excused himself to Artfire, Fastlane led him out of view of the small crowd of Cybertronians and Camiens assembled at the space bridge. Yet another batch of the colonists had arrived to find their own place in Iacon, or even attempting to settle outside the boundaries past Metroplex’s influence—only this time, the arrival had led to incarceration, as one of the interplanetary immigrants had wound up involved in a destructive joyride that had knocked out power for a whole district. Fortunately, Cloudraker was only there to report on the reactions of Camiens just now arriving, and his job was done for the time being. Behind a column, Fastlane confided in his sibling.

“So, I know you’ve been needing a break from all this reporting scrap, right?” he asked, nodding off towards Artfire in the distance. “My boss, they asked me about something kind of under the table. Basically, they need someone to provide a little extra in the way of bots, on a hush-hush mission—to Veras Centralus. I nudged ’em a bit about it, and they said that, aside from taking care of what needs to be done, most of the time there will be proper R&R, plenty of downtime in exchange for just a little bit of side work.”

“H-how’s that involve me?” asked Cloudraker. Nerves aside, he’d never actually shied away from danger. As long as it didn’t involve going underground or talking his way out of trouble. Even so, it was peacetime at long last, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to give that up so easily.

“Hey, listen to you! You’re no _me_ in a fight, but once you’re in the air, you’re a regular Blurr,” Fastlane said, an encouraging smile on his face. “They need optics in the sky, and—hey, you still have those old gravity-rod rifles, right?”

“Uh, yeah. But what’s the mission?” Cloudraker pressed.

“So, apparently there’s this old Decepticon base out in the middle of nowhere over there, aaaaand theymighthavegottentheirhandsonsomestufffromKimia,” Fastlane blurted out. “Bad, nasty stuff. Stuff like cold phosphex, maybe.”

Cloudraker shuddered. He’d seen first-hand the results of messing around with cold phosphex, when an improperly-tested variant formula nearly killed more than a dozen soldiers in the same unit to which he and Fastlane had once been assigned.

“Alright,” he said after a moment of consideration. “But because it’s the right thing to do, and not just because I need a break.”

It wasn’t wholly the truth, but it was as close as he was willing to get. There was just one more thing, however. A situation like that, it was good to have bots you trusted watching your aft. And as good a brother as Fastlane could be, he could also be a little too focused on his own daring deeds.

“You said they need sharp optics, right?” he asked, looking to Artfire.

* * *

“Optics online, you piles of dross!” yelled the guard. “Up against the wall, hands and any other appendages where we can see ‘em.”

“Uh, what?” she replied, head still fuzzy with the lingering hum of… something potent. She couldn’t remember what she’d had, or what she’d done. In fact, with the way her systems were screaming warnings at her about the need to rest and recover from getting exceptionally energized, she couldn’t even recall her own name. She struggled into an upright position, dimly aware of a noisy black and white blur next to a dark green blur outside what appeared to be the force field of a detainment cell.

Just as she processed that she was the one inside the cell, the black and white blob became slightly more recognizable as probably being an angry Cybertronian, bearing one of those bright red badges. He was gesturing at something else, off to her side.

“You too, whirlybot! I want both you buzzbrains presentable,” the chiaroscuro mess of mechanical parts shouted.

She managed to turn her head to the side, though she regretted it, as it felt like her personality components continued turning without her, in contrary directions. She struggled to stay upright, but was able to see that a vaguely familiar indigo mechanoid was working his way upright next to her.

“Yeah, yeah, I am being up,” he replied, groaning. The word ‘up’ stirred her memory—Flareup! That was her name. “Is not first time I am standing.”

“Now the both of you, listen good,” the Cybertronian yelled, though Flareup could only focus on his badge, and it seemed like the little red face was doing the talking. “This here’s a **bonafide** _hero_ whose **personal property** you lugnuts decided to up and crash through three storefronts.”

“Hey now, that’s more than enough, Downshift,” replied the dark green blur that had by now resolved into some kind of winged Cybertronian with a red face that matched the insignia just below it on his chest. “Like I said earlier, Throttlebot here—”

“Right, right. What’s his name?” asked the bot who must have been Downshift.

The other Cybertronian looked a bit lost, or confused. “Oh, no. That _is_ his name. Throttlebot.”

Downshift looked a bit skeptical.

“Like I was saying, Throttlebot’s, er, in my employ. And, you know, I get how things can be these days. An Autobot’s got to let off some steam now and then, and we don’t exactly have a war going on. If you don’t mind releasing him into my custody, I can see about covering the cost of the damages—I should still have a bit in the way of credits saved up,” the other bot said, a warm and reasonable tone to his voice.

“Ah, wonderful,” said Throttlebot, slumping back down to the floor until he was at Flareup’s knee level. “A thousand thank—”

“ _And_ he can work off the damages doing double shifts,” the green mech said, his voice becoming much colder as he turned to glare at Throttlebot. Flareup caught the edge of that glare, and she suddenly felt a whole lot more sober.

With that, came the rush of memories. She’d arrived on Cybertron to celebrate the completion of the repairs from the recent combiner attacks that had spread not only to Caminus, but several other colonies as well. As a junior rescue worker, she’d been extremely busy even past the actual labor, filing reports and attending meetings about implementing new training procedures. When the opportunity to visit Cybertron and unwind presented itself, she dove into it.

At some point—the memories were fractured, missing data—she’d met Throttlebot, and expressed curiosity about the Autobots ( _that’s_ what they were called!). She’d only admit it to a trusted friend, or when completely and utterly Firestarred, but her favorite part of doing rescue work was always tearing open a busted vehicle with a rescue claw, or knocking down the structurally unsound remains of a damaged building with controlled detonations. The idea of outright _war_ intrigued her, and though she’d never be halfway comfortable with the loss of life, she was fascinated by the mechanics of destruction.

So, when Throttlebot had offered in his curious little accent to show her his boss’s “ATV”, she’d jumped at the opportunity. It was some kind of enormous ground vehicle, armored beyond anything Flareup could imagine. It looked like it could plow straight through a building.

Evidently, it had. She remembered something about one of the two of them starting up the vehicle, the other trying to steer it. Maybe Throttlebot was trying to impress her, or she’d coaxed him into driving around just a little. She remembered at least one storefront suddenly appearing through the viewport, and then flashes of light, and darkness.

She groaned, and drew the attention of the two Autobots standing outside the cell.

“What about the Caminusian? Caminusan?” Downshift started to mumble options to himself.

“Camien, right?” asked the other Autobot. He looked her over, then his mouth shifted into a grin that Flareup wasn’t sure she liked. “Maybe we can make the same arrangement, huh? I bet the folks back home wouldn’t like a diplomatic incident. So soon after making contact with Cybertron, and you’re already causing property damage?”

“Um,” was all she managed.

“Yeah,” he said, and then offered a handshake. “Name’s Groundshaker, by the way. I’m Throttlebot’s boss, aft-saver, and the bot who is gonna make sure he doesn’t see one shanix until this is all paid off.”

She accepted the handshake. Why were all Cybertronians so darn _massive_? She thought for a moment that her hand disappeared in his, and was relieved when it came back without any dents.

Two and a half cycles, a few messages back and forth to Caminus, a whole lot of shouting and a bit more whispering later, Flareup found herself officially on break from rescue work. Unofficially, she was tasked to help out Groundshaker and work off the damage she’d done, plus a bit more in what amounted to bribes to shop owners to keep them from pressing charges and making it an interplanetary incident. Officially, she was on holiday to get some well-deserved rest. And somewhere between the two, she was told that she had better get her destructive streak under control, or that holiday might just be extended even further.

It was after confirming receipt of that last message that she exited the comm suite in the small office that amounted to the Camien embassy on Cybertron, and found Groundshaker and Throttlebot waiting in the lobby. They were watching a holorecording.

Of her.

“Hey, all squared away?” asked Groundshaker, not bothering to look up from the video. Throttlebot acknowledged her, but there was something queer in the light of his optics. It looked almost like awe.

The video ended before she could respond.

“Yes. Um, what was—” she began, pointing to the small player in Groundshaker’s palm.

He grinned. “Well, you’re working for me now, ain’t you? I need to know **something** about how you do on the job. Where your skills lie, so to speak.”

“On the ground, in many pieces,” suggested Throttlebot. Groundshaker elbowed him in the cockpit. “Ach! That is to say, you are very good at the demolitions, yes? Very controlled, with the big impact.”

Groundshaker’s smile widened as she nodded, a bit slowly and uneasily.

“Clearing hazardous materials and obstacles is an important part of any rescue operation,” she replied, feeling like a prerecorded message.

“See, right now, I don’t need you for a rescue operation,” Groundshaker said, switching to another holorecording player. “In case it weren’t obvious, I’ve got a few friends in the Security Force. Old buddies from the war. And when a war goes on as long as ours did, believe you me, some buddies get _old_.”

He flicked on the player, and a tiny image of an unfamiliar planetoid resolved above his hand.

“Apparently there’s a bit of trouble from back in the day that still needs solving, and, well, this being _peace-time_ and all,” he grumbled, sounding more sour about the idea of not being at war than Flareup would have imagined possible, “there’s certain things that can’t be done on the up-and-up. Which, mind you, has nothing to do with why we are _co-inci-dentally_ hauling a bunch of vacationers and some trade goods to this little dustball right here.”

He tapped another button, and the image zoomed to what appeared to be an empty region of desert, with a blinking indicator over a craggy region of more desert. His optics weren’t on the projection, though; he was looking at her.

“Just out of curiosity,” he said, his tone very measured and serious and not at all curious, gradually becoming more casual while still somehow making it clear he was not actually being hypothetical, “how would you feel about a situation that puts those demolition skills towards, let’s call it a _greater good_? Say, something along the lines of, oh, I don’t know, tearing down a weapons research facility that is still in operation, in **direct** contravention of the admittedly vague and limited terms on which the war ended? Maybe a facility that would be, just possibly, staffed by some dangerous Decepticon types who might’a stolen secrets about weapons that weren’t ever meant for more than limited production, or even deemed too destructive for war?”

She was about to respond, when he raised a finger from his off hand.

“ _Bearing in mind_ , still hypothetically speaking, of course, that your alternative is to remain on Cybertron and staff the front desk of my little business here,” he said, now also looking at Throttlebot, “which is **directly** opposite the as-of-yet not restored bank of shops that the two of you so magnificently ruined, whose shopkeepers and customers may perhaps still recognize you so recently after that _unfortunate_ incident?”

Behind his faceplate, Throttlebot gulped. He looked to her, and all she could do was shrug.

“Hypothetically,” she began, sounding a little more convincing than Groundshaker, in her own opinion, “I’d feel like it was the responsible thing to do, in the interests of peace and prosperity for both Caminus and Cybertron.”

Groundshaker laughed.

“Well, I’ll be! Ain’t that delightful. Now, tell me,” he said, rising up and leading the way out, his voice now booming in a way that suggested his earlier tone was meant to be more confidential, “have you ever heard of a little planetoid called Veras Centralus? _Awful_ nice this time of year, at least in the northern hemisphere.”

* * *

Glyph had been having a very long mega-cycle. She had planned a visit to Cybertron to make a presentation on the subject of Camien dialects for a body of scientists and scholars from the homeworld, and had been hoping for the opportunity to survey some of the ruins outside of the bounds of Metroplex thereafter. However, an incident involving a Cybertronian and a Camien visitor had apparently created a minor diplomatic incident that required the diversion of resources and the suspension of certain essential resource that she considered vital to her agenda, and thus she had been forced to put the entire matter on hold, indefinitely.

Now, she was staring across the room at her colleague, Vibes. Well, to be exact, 'colleague' was inaccurate. Vibes was something more of an attache, officially included in the presentation agenda as an expert on colloquial speech and local variations in poetic and musical forms from across Caminus. Glyph was well aware that the tall, smooth-lined robot was also included because it had been deemed that Cybertron was a planet of many potential risks, and she had a long history of involvement in matters of planetary security. While there had never been anything on the level of the recent catastrophic attack by not one but at least two gestalt combiners, it was certain that Vibes was at the very least a seasoned risk analyst and an expert in defusing hostile situations.

“We could still go, you know,” Vibes said.

“Of course, yes,” Glyph began, before reversing. “But, no. It simply wouldn’t do, we’ve already informed the officials on Cybertron that we no longer have access to certain essential materials necessary for our presentation, and until such time as the present diversion of resources permits it, we cannot in good conscience provide a—”

“I mean,” Vibes interrupted, raising her head so that her visor glinted in the overhead light. “We could still go to Cybertron. Just, less official, you know? A real casual trip, see the sights, meet the people. You _are_ still Chief Archaeometrist, right? You’ve got _professional_ curiosity, but there’s _personal_ interest, too. You don’t have to go just because it’s on a schedule.”

She looked up higher, past Glyph and towards the ceiling. “Sides, it’s not like we’re real busy now, anyway.”

The receiver in Glyph’s forearm began flashing, indicating an incoming call. She responded immediately—and a familiar Cybertronian appeared in the projection. It was Fireball, who had expressed such a deep and intense curiosity about Camien culture that she had made arrangements to visit the planet on several occasions, including one prolonged visit with medical engineers to make certain significant adjustments to her frame, vocal processor—ah, but she was speaking, and Glyph was dwelling.

“—really appreciated all your help with those maps, and, well, that’s kind of why I’m calling you. I’ve been talking to some bots, and I’m kind of putting together a little team to go out and have a look at what’s out there, on Veras Centralus,” Fireball said. Across the room, Glyph could see the slight twitch of Vibe’s foot that was the sole tell she was listening in while feigning disinterest. “I won’t lie, it’s probably going to be hazardous on my end, but I could really use you on the planet at a safe distance, to keep an eye on things and help out with—you know, all that data and topography stuff.”

“Oh, goodness,” Glyph began. “Well, I don’t know that I….”

“If it helps,” Fireball said, adopting a slightly embarrassed yet coy posture, “Veras is kind of known as a vacation spot, and has a long history connected to recreation in the wartime culture of Autobots.”

A beat, a giddy rush. “I… would be amenable to such an arrangement, yes.”

Then, she looked up.

“Would it be acceptable to bring along a companion?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, I was going to have Rollout in this. But, whoops! He's on the Lost Light, and this starts on Cybertron and Caminus. Fortunately, Flareup's just as good at demolitions, if not better.


	3. Everything Right is Wrong Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If a Cybertronian studied the history of Earth military strategy, they might come across a statement by Helmuth von Moltke the Elder that is often abbreviated as "no plan survives contact with the enemy". Of course, plenty of plans don't even live that long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for some discussion of traumatic events in wartime, including mutilation. Thanks again to Cabooceratops for beta-reading.

“That is _completely_ unacceptable.”

Heavy Load didn’t bother to look up to see what Greasepit was pointing at, and focused his attention on the engex distiller he was tinkering with. No matter what anyone else in the facility said, he was certain that there was an aftertaste indicating a problem somewhere in the filtration unit.

When the fuel manager didn’t continue, after a moment of fussing at a gunked-up flange to remove it and clean it off, Heavy Load finally responded.

“Wuh, what is?” he asked, focused more on applying a sonic pick to clean the flange.

“ _That_ ,” Greasepit insisted, and Heavy Load finally caught sight of him gesturing in the direction of the rest of the facility. “All of that—everything that jumped-up Phase Fiver is insisting we still do here. We’ve been here for meta-cycles, playing batch proto-initiator to all the Decepticon forces’ least impressive weapons engineers.”

From the sound of it, Greasepit stomped around the canteen and settled down on an empty seat, throwing his feet up on top of something.

“Don’t luh-let him hear you talking like that,” Heavy Load advised as he fitted the flange back in place, and looked for the next component to check. He’d had to type out a list of steps ahead of time. “You rih-remember the, um, you remember what he did to Growl?”

“Ah, he’s busy making Bombshock do transform-ups,” Greasepit scoffed. “Like the war ain’t over! Been over! Like we couldn’t be getting comfy somewhere, make a nice fat profit selling old junk to Deathsaurus, be on the other side of the galaxy by the time he figures out there’s nothing worthwhile here.”

“There is,” Heavy Load insisted. He tapped at a filter screen. Wobbly.

“Like what? Bitstream’s collection of old Autobot datalogs with all the typos still in?” Greasepit scoffed. “Hotlink’s the only one who ever actually made something new and proper destructive, but it’s too complicated for anyone else to make it work without melting their hands off.”

Removing the filter screen with care, Heavy Load began examining its surface. Nothing out of the ordinary—ah, but there it was. It had been mistakenly placed in a wider groove _above_ the groove in which it was actually meant to sit. Still silent, he applied the pick to the interior of the correct groove, just to be sure, and fit the screen into it. A light tap; it didn’t budge.

“Done,” he said, and began closing up the assembly, one bit at a time. Now the engex would taste right, and he wouldn’t have to worry about handing off his already limited rations to someone with a less sensitive palate.

Greasepit circled around to watch. “How you do that with only one hand, anyway? I known you for ages, I still don’t get it.”

Making sure he had closed everything up properly and that no stray parts were sitting around the workspace, Heavy Load spared a glance at his right arm. It ended in a chemical mixing drum; after chemical damage left his original limb unsalvageable, he’d simply opted to find a more practical use for what had been an otherwise neglected off-hand. When the war was on, he’d even found ways to weaponize it, but these days, it mostly saw practical use.

He returned his attention to the engex distiller. “Puh. Patience, I guess. You should, um. You should try it.”

Greasepit scoffed. “Patience? Patience, I got. If I didn’t have patience, I wouldn’ta survived this posting.”

Switching on the distiller, Heavy Load confirmed that all the status lights were green. It would take some more time to determine whether or not he’d fixed the problem, since for the time being, all the rations were set as regular energon. There wasn’t enough to spare for testing.

Done for now, he turned the distiller off, and looked up at Greasepit. Patience? No, but he had stubbornness, for sure.

“You survived buh-because you can, mn,” he said, the persistent stammer becoming more pronounced now that he couldn’t focus on other things. Heavy Load collected himself, and tried again. “Because you can talk your way out of responsibility, and Ruh-Roadblock stopped caring.”

Greasepit’s optics flickered, blinked. “There’s words I never thought I’d hear. Roadblock, legendary hardaft of the Decepticon Ground Forces, assigned to a post off the front lines for so long that he actually stopped giving a scrap?”

“It, it’s true,” Heavy Load replied. “With the war over, even if some, um, some Decepticons are still out there making a mmmmess, then there’s not really a point to weapons development. Or, mm, guarding weapons development. Developers.”

Greasepit managed a combined scoff and shrug. “Reckon that’s mostly true, only we’re still _here_ , ain’t we?”

“Yuh, well.” Heavy Load rose up, towering over twice Greasepit’s height. He brushed off his only hand against the side of his barrel. As he made for the exit, he looked back over his shoulder. “I guh-guess giving up isn’t the same as, uh, surrendering.”

On that, he exited, and made his way back towards his own laboratory space. Officially, he was part of the ground forces attached to the facility for security purposes. But his expertise in chemistry had eventually won him a small space of his own in which to experiment, particularly after Shellshock had complained about Heavy Load’s “hobbies” endangering his own collection of armaments in their shared barracks space.

Down the hallway, he could hear the familiar sounds of transform-ups echoing from the garage that had long since been repurposed as a training room: an overburdened T-cog straining with a _tsche-chu-chu… chu-tsche_ , the heavy sound of something falling to the ground. Roadblock’s growls and cursing.

In general, Heavy Load was safe from the Ground Commander’s often arbitrary punishments and “exercises”. When he was in a good mood, the chemist liked to tell himself it was due to his greater value as a weapons expert than as a straightforward warrior, his time better spent exploring the most hazardous and harmful substances he could devise. In worse moods, he figured it was more likely pity. The two of them had both served under Gideon, after all.

The thought of it made Heavy Load clutch at the point where his arm ended and the barrel drum began. He’d been assigned by Gideon to handle developing a store of mycopropelene, after an Autobot scientist had provided samples of the substance to one of the earlier incarnations of the same facility where he was now stationed. The highly corrosive substance had proven so incredibly destructive that even the Decepticons who’d dropped it on Autobot forces were traumatized by the experience, with many reporting recurring nightmares of half-dissolved Autobots rising up to drag them into damnation.

It had become too much for one of them—Roadblock’s own opposite on the aerial side of Gideon’s forces, a mechanoid named Switchblade. Heavy Load woke up from recharge one mega-cycle to discover Switchblade pushing the chemist’s arm into the last remaining vat of mycopropelene. More than the pain and the sound of his own screams, more than the loss of his arm and the damage to his vocal processor from droplets that splashed onto him as he pulled back, Heavy Load remembered how muted Switchblade’s optics looked. Lightless and dull, like a walking corpse.

 

* * *

 

“Dead bots walking, this is what we are being,” whined Throttlebot, his rotor twitching. “We are not great warriors, some kind of elite commando unit to be making such a secret raid on a dangerous Decepticon base! We are retired, it is peacetime beside, yes?”

Fireball paused in her presentation, looking to Throttlebot. The small helicopter with the curious accent was gradually curling in the direction of the floor, as if he was transforming in slow-motion. Beside her, Groundshaker laughed, and set a hand on her shoulder. An actuator jolted slightly, but she didn’t let her discomfort with the gesture show beyond that.

“Fireball’s making it sound worse than it is, trust me,” he said, fixing her with a curious look before tapping the projector to skip ahead several images. Clamp Down and Copca had provided details on what little was known of the research facility on Veras Centralus, with some projections on likely developments over time in terms of threat level and population; Fireball had been trying to explain what was known and what the likely risks were by talking in terms of projections. But this was a planning session, not a presentation to supervisors who she needed to impress with potential threats. Groundshaker continued, “overall, there’s no sign that the staff of the facility has changed much since we got this intel. Shanix to scrap, the odds are good no big guns have holed up there in all that time.”

The police cadet named Fastlane raised a hand. Clamp Down had recommended bringing him along, which had at first given Fireball a mix of confidence that the police could actually help, and wariness that she was being watched closely. However his attitude was shaking those ideas. Especially when he asked, “what about big tanks, or big jets?”

His brother Cloudraker elbowed him before Groundshaker could muster a response. Fastlane muttered something to the effect of, “ _What, I wanna know,_ ” and Groundshaker went on as if the interruption hadn’t occurred.

“I’ve seen bad, believe me. This ain’t bad, this is an errand. Matter of fact, those of you without extensive combat experience...” he paused, and indicated Glyph, Vibes, Flareup, and Fireball herself, “...will be staying far out of sight. Your role will be logistics and support.”

Flareup let out an “aw,” slumping back down in a manner that mirrored Throttlebot’s own continuing descent to the floor. “I thought I was here to knock stuff down.”

“That’s, well,” Fireball felt her fingers twitch around empty air. That’s what she had thought, as well. She’d understood that Flareup had been added to the group under unusual circumstances, and of course Glyph wasn’t exactly a combatant, but this didn’t meet with her notions of how things would go up to this point. She turned and looked to Groundshaker. “It’s all _voluntary_ , right? They— _we_ can opt into getting on the ground if we want, right?”

Groundshaker squared his shoulders and his jaw, a very exaggerated pose that even she could read. “Fireball, all due respect, y'spent most of the war in labs, am I right?”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

Fireball might have shared her brother’s penchant for inventing weapons, but where Skyfall had stuck to laboratories (where, as it turned out, he could slack off and steal others’ work, or sneak out to turn traitor), she’d always found that hands-on experimentation in the field was more her style. She’d even briefly been known by the name Jury-Rig, after her unit had been impressed by her improvisation with native technology on Traujor.

She still remembered the look of surprise on the Decepticons when the harvesting vehicle snapped open like a set of jaws and clamped shut around them.

“No, not really,” she replied, drawing herself up to match Groundshaker’s posturing. Her frame had originally been that of a flyer, and she still had the stature to match most others. “But, well, you have my records.”

She turned to look at those assembled. A motley group of scientists, retired warriors, and colonists who only knew the war from the records that had begun to circulate through the space bridge. But that didn’t make any one of them incapable. “And we’ve got theirs. Caminus might not have been at war, but Vibes still has an impressive history in security, and Flareup—”

Flareup perked up very visibly, while Vibes seemed to be waving off the compliment to her background.

“—you’ve handled yourself in local conflicts, right?” Fireball asked. She tapped a datapad in her off hand, looking over the summary of Flareup’s accomplishments. Her citations for breaches of conduct and procedure were covered as well, but those were just as telling as far as how well she could defend herself. If there had still been a war, Fireball couldn’t help but think Flareup could have quickly distinguished herself on the front lines. “Besides, I strongly doubt you’ll be much use in demolitions from behind a vidscreen.”

“Uh, yes ma’am!” Flareup nodded enthusiastically, then stopped her head and corrected herself, “I mean, no ma’am? I mean, it would be difficult.”

Beside her, Fireball heard Groundshaker vent air, and then hold silent for a moment. She looked at him from the corner of her visor; his optics were shaded by his helm and his expression was inscrutable.

“Fine,” he said at last. “Leastwise, until we’ve scouted a bit and sussed out the threat level. On that note: Throttlebot.”

She saw the little indigo rotorcraft straighten up at last, just as he was about to fall off the bench. Fireball wondered if he had finally remembered where he was, and that there were optics on him.

“You, Cloudraker, and Windmill will make a series of aerial sweeps. We’ll be picking up tourist markers; if the Cons scan you, you’ll ping as a bunch of sightseers checking out the rock formations. Nothing suspicious; Glyph, we’ll need you to figure out a flight path for each of these flybots that comes close enough to spot the facility, without them thinking we’re really looking.”

“We have some recommended flight paths from the tourism board,” Fireball added, bringing up the projection of a map that displayed several wide loops to and from the ports and points of interest on Veras Centralus. She’d visited once herself, and though she wouldn’t admit it now, some of the choices were based on her own interest. Surely there was no problem mixing such dire business with a little pleasure? “We think minor deviations based on these should cover what’s necessary.”

“Hmm, yes,” Glyph leaned over the back of the seat before her to look closer. Her small size meant that she was actually standing on her chair, the seats of Groundshaker’s ship being built for wartime Cybertronians who tended to be on the bulkier side. “I may require assistance, if Vibes has recommendations?”

Fireball joined Glyph in looking to Vibes, whose posture still had a detached character. She hoped that it was just an affectation. Comparatively low risk or not, they couldn’t afford to be lax in planning or execution.

After a moment of silence, Vibes gave a simple nod.

“Sure, it’ll be like driving on new tires,” she said. "Maybe Artfire has some ideas, too."

"I can look it over, sure," the former sniper replied. Without moving from his seat, he traced his finger in the air, seeming to be pointing at different locations. Fireball could see his mouth moving, but no audio came out until he said, "I see some likely points, already. Areas where it would make sense for a tourist to hang around, in the first place."

Fireball looked to Groundshaker, who nodded. "Alright, then," she said, turning to look at Glyph, Vibes, and Artfire in turn. "We'll need the three of you to focus on that while we're en route. We might need to improvise once we begin, too, so it'd help if you figure out a few alternate plans."

“What’s that leave for the rest of us?” asked Fastlane, this time raising his hand after speaking, as if it only then occurred to him that he was interrupting.

“That there’s the fun part,” Groundshaker grinned. He switched to another image, a fact-sheet on cold phosphex. Fireball barely had to glance at the image to recognize it, though she couldn’t have duplicated the formula from memory if her life depended on it. “If they’ve still got more than a few units of glass gas, then we just need to detonate a powerful enough charge to rupture their containers, and it’ll wipe itself out. If every little thing goes right, we can just sneak up to their storage and blow the whole darn thing down.”

Internally, Fireball counted, resisting the urge to blurt out something, and giving Groundshaker a moment to say more. When he didn’t, her jets made a long, slow intake of air. Some habits remained, even long after rejecting her alt mode.

“That’s not all, right?” she asked, looking to Groundshaker, whose brow quirked in what might have been a puzzled expression. It was so hard for her to read bots with faces, they didn’t express nearly enough with their EM fields. “If they can just make more, well, we need to do something about their data storage.”

She saw Fastlane raise his hand again, evidently waiting to be acknowledged before speaking, this time. Fireball considered keeping track of how often he did one or the other, to see if there was a pattern.

“Don’t we have to, yanno, take care of anyone who might know the formula, too?”

She said “no,” at the same time as Windmill and Groundshaker. She looked to Groundshaker, and nodded her head in Windmill’s direction. He let out a “mn,” and pointed to the defensive technology engineer.

“You wanna explain it, kid?”

“Sure,” Windmill replied, straightening up and going into what Fireball thought of as his ‘lecture mode’. “Essentially, glass gas—properly known as cold phosphex—is too complex, on top of being so volatile and hazardous to create. The odds aren’t in favor of even an exceptionally brilliant chemist being able to brew up the stuff without detailed notes, and due to the danger, it’s standard practice to manufacture it with a series of purpose-built drones.”

It was an accurate summary, as far as Fireball was concerned. She’d been distracted by Fastlane, who had been making a series of little “hm” noises as he listened, though it wasn’t apparent whether he actually understood, judging by his posture. He was definitely occupied enough that he was surprised when Flareup clapped a fist into her palm right behind him, making him jump.

“So we just need to bust up the drones, right?” the demolitionist asked, grinning.

“Damned right,” Groundshaker said. “Who knows, might even be so lucky—mind you, never count on _luck_ when you’re in a fight, but heck, anything’s possible—might be they keep the drones next to the phosphex containers!”

 

* * *

 

“You’re never going to believe the luck,” Bitstream said, not waiting for the door to Heavy Load’s laboratory to open before he started talking. “Well, maybe you will, you’ve seen a lot of scrap, all kinds of weird things during the war, right?”

Heavy Load barely looked up as the Seeker forced his way into the small room. The lock shouldn’t have opened without permission, but the retracting cable snaking into Bitstream’s wrist made it clear that the self-proclaimed “information engineer” had simply brute-forced the security codes as was his usual habit.

“I mean, you probably see weird things all the time anyway, all that exposure to dangerous chemicals. Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Bitstream babbled, losing track, “I was thinking about maybe adding something to my rations now and then, what would it take to get you to brew up something with more kick? I’m not talking Nightmare Fuel, but a little to overclock the old brain module, and—”

Heavy Load spun his mixer drum, grinding it against the table. Bitstream stopped, mouth agape.

“B-Bitstream,” the chemist asked, “why are you here?”

The Seeker’s open mouth spread into a grin, and he slapped a hand down on the table, leaning over Heavy Load.

“So, I’m in the planetary extranet, right? Looking for the deep content, darknet stuff where I can dig up some free entertainment, maybe get into one of the resorts’ private media stores and catch up on my dramas—when I run across info that there’s _Hedonians_ on VC!”

He stamped his other hand down on the table, grinning so broadly that Heavy Load thought his head would split in two along the line of his mouth.

“ _Hedonians, HL!_ Who do you go to when you need to get a targeting system for a giga-techvolt cannon? Who have more proton missile launchers than anyone else? Who were Swindle’s best customers ever?” Bitstream ranted, leaning closer and closer with each question.

“Yuh, I uh, get it,” Heavy Load said, starting to lean back in response. “So?”

Bitstream’s optics flared, and he stood up, clapping his hands on the sides of his helm. “So? So? So we’re a weapons engineering facility for a war that’s up and ended! So we’re sitting around waiting for this junk to rust, when we could be turning it into mad shanix!”

He settled back down as quickly as he worked himself up, and shrugged.

“So, I axed Roadblock and he says sure, let’s sell ‘em things and get out of here, set up somewhere more profitable and maybe even make a proper military contracting deal.”

Heavy Load was silent for more than a moment.

“That’s, hm,” he paused again. “That’s good. Real good, we can, uh—”

“ **Heavy Load!** ” roared Roadblock from outside the lab, pushing past Bitstream. The blue Seeker fell back against the wall as the former Ground Commander’s golden form shoved him out of the way.

It was something of an unspoken joke that Roadblock was terrifying in all ways except for stature. Powerful, a brilliant fighter, below only Phase Sixers in terms of his armor, and obsessed with weaponizing fear, he was well-known to be as willing to turn his familiarity with terror on his underlings as on his opponents.

But the shiny yellow and dull gray form before Heavy Load right now was also, well, _slight_. If he hadn’t seen Roadblock transform with his own optics, he wouldn’t have thought there was room for an alternate mode. It was a testament to vocal engineering that he was able to muster such volume.

Still, Roadblock somehow managed to _loom_. It was impressive, and Heavy Load thought it might have something to do with his thermal generators. Turned up all the way, they could melt any incoming projectiles into vapor in an instant. The oppressive feeling of his mere presence suggested that he kept them running at a low burn even off the battlefield, extending his personal space further than normal.

“Sir, yes sir?” Heavy Load asked, standing up and saluting sharply. Bitstream followed suit, a bit more sloppily and far enough behind that it was obviously an afterthought.

“At ease. This glitch tell you about the Hedonians?” Roadblock asked, rapping Bitstream with the back of his fist.

“Yes, sir.”

“Saves some time. Good, how much glass gas do we have left?”

“Ah, um,” Heavy Load paused, and sorted through the drawer beneath the table for the right datapad. He checked the inventory list. “Twenty-seven barrels, sir.”

“Timeframe on producing more?” Roadblock asked, no longer dignifying Heavy Load with his direct attention, instead fixing Bitstream with a glare that made the scientist straighten into a more dignified and rigid posture.

“Hm, ah, about,” Heavy Load rolled his drum for a moment, thinking. “If we get the drones working properly, 1.35 barrels per mega-cycle, sir.”

Still not looking, Roadblock’s voice developed an edge that made it clear he wasn’t looking for an unsatisfactory answer. “Can we double that?”

“Without extra, mm, drones…?” If it was anyone else, Heavy Load would have told them that it was too hazardous and complex to leave to anyone but the drones. The computational capacity of an average Cybertronian brain module wasn’t suited to tracking all the factors necessary for preparing even a small quantity of cold phosphex under ideal conditions, which would have meant time and assistance.

Fortunately for Heavy Load, who was not inclined to test Roadblock’s patience, he wasn’t an average Cybertronian. He patted his drum-arm.

“If someone, uh, reliable assists me, yes sir. Muh, more than double,” he replied.

Roadblock turned, the blue gleam of his optics narrowing. “You’re certain. I won’t tolerate failure just because you’re trying to avoid a reprimand.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Heavy Load tapped his head with his sole hand. “My vocal p-processor is damaged, sir, not mmmmmy brain module. I’m stih. Still functioning.”

The room became oppressively hot. Heavy Load worried about some of his samples and other materials being damaged. Roadblock turned to face him, and it felt as if there was some kind of demon in his shadow, many times larger. “Overconfidence is as much a weakness as cowardice, Heavy Load. I recall that the Autobot traitor who sold us the samples and formulae for, hrm, ‘cold phosphex’... Skyfall, yes?” Roadblock asked, his voice icy where his presence was an inferno. “He was very firm that this was beyond the ability of a live technician.”

“Sir, with the utmost respect,” Heavy Load’s fuel intake constricted and expanded, as near to a gulp as his anatomy allowed. “Skyfall’s only competency was in making deals. I can easily manufacture more, myself.”

Roadblock maintained the heightened temperature, silent. Heavy Load became aware of systems warnings as the heat became hazardous, heard the automated protective coverings sealing over the cabinets to keep them insulated, a security measure he’d put in place just in case of something like this. It had proven useful more than once. Just as the warning signals started to appear in his view as a HUD, Roadblock relented.

“Good. Then you should be able to do half again as much, easily.” It wasn’t a request or a question, it was a statement of fact.

Heavy Load nodded.

“Sir, yes sir.”


	4. You Probably Get That A Lot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arriving on Veras Centralus, the Autobots get to work. Plans gang agley.

 

“The two of you could perhaps cut down on your speed, yes?” asked Throttlebot, struggling to keep up with Windmill and Cloudraker. In spite of having a helicopter vehicle mode like Throttlebot himself, Windmill was far faster, easily creating a blue blur to match the scarlet streak of Cloudraker’s jet mode as they zipped over the landscape of Veras Centralus. “It would be good to be remembering why we are here.”

Cloudraker broke ahead of Windmill for just an instant, and abruptly arced upwards towards the upper atmosphere, tracing a wide loop that made Throttlebot dizzy.

“Sorry, right, it’s just...” he replied over comms, briefly out of sight as he demonstrated the origin of his name, cutting through vapor clouds before swooping back down and slowing to a speed more evenly paced with Throttlebot. “The sky’s so _big_ here. There’s something about the landscape that feels more _open_ , not like on Cybertron. It reminds me of parts of Earth, actually.”

“In any case,” added Windmill as he simply slowed down to join his fellow Autobots, “looking like we’re having fun is part of the act.”

He performed a brief dip before bobbing upwards to punctuate his statement, then announced loudly, “Hey, I wanna get a better angle on that rock formation at 2:00!”

He accelerated abruptly, shooting off their previous flight path to feign interest in an unusual column of wind-worn stone. Settling down near it, he transformed into his root mode just before landing, and pulled out what looked for all the world like a cheap souvenir holocamera, which he began aiming at the rocks.

“Are we sure the comm masking is working? I mean, I know the Cons probably don’t have reason to suspect we’re anything but tourists, but,” Cloudraker asked over subspace communications as he came up to land near Windmill, looking profoundly uneasy with being back down on the ground. “What if they suspect something?” 

“That’s the beauty,” Vibes replied from far away and out of sight back at a budget hotel hab suite, “all that time you Autobots and Decepticons spent fighting each other, you learned plenty about looking out for each other’s encoded communications. But Caminus, we were so far out of sight and out of mind, that our signals don’t even match up tech-wise. They’d have to know how to rig up the right receivers just to pick up on your chatter.”

“In other words, we’re your only audience right now,” added Artfire, who was likely still seated beside Flareup, tracking their position on maps.

“And since it’s unlikely there’s anyone here in the market for Camien emergency response band radios,” Flareup added, her voice having an odd echo that suggested she was further away from the small communications setup in the suite, “all they’re going to hear is what you’ve got going on the _Autobot_ comms that you’re not even actually listening to.”

Throttlebot took a moment to unmute that particular signal, and was treated to a dry-voiced recording describing the natural wonders of the region, originating from a small tourist gadget temporarily bolted to his side. A built-in GPS had the outward advantage of making sure the recordings were suited to where he was actually hovering, while also making it seem like he didn’t care if anyone knew where he was. If the Decepticons were looking for him, the ping of the signal would make the whole ‘tourist’ routine seem believable. After all, tourists didn’t tend to sneak about—they made themselves aggressively and even obnoxiously visible.

“So, just remember to talk _out loud_ a bit,” Groundshaker cut in, with a scratching sound and whine of feedback that suggested he had snatched the mic. “Tourists don’t tend to hover around keeping quiet.”

“Oh, um, yes,” he replied, then said aloud, “it is a lovely formation but why did you have to make the purchase of such a slow holocamera? You are taking forever.”

Keeping up the act, Windmill replied, “With what money? Getting here cost enough, I’m not going to pay extra just to have a faster capture rate.”

In the same moment, Cloudraker signaled over comms, “I think I caught a glimpse of the facility. At your ten and eleven, Throttlebot.” He was pointedly not looking in the direction in question, instead walking in a wide circle around the rock formations Windmill was pretending to record for posterity.

“Confirmed,” Windmill replied, “this detector Fireball threw together is working like a charm, and still taking decent photos of the landscape, too.”

Throttlebot’s ages of experience performing wartime recon made subtly observing the disguised Decepticon facility as simple and familiar an action as transformation itself, though he’d be sure to play up how supposedly tricky it was, later on.

“Two observable changes from this position, comparing to the older schematics we have,” he noted on comms. “An extension of the northwestern entrance by 5.8 mechanometers, and additional rock cover precisely over the region we identified as the barracks, approximately doubling its size. Most likely being an indication of more staff at some time since the data was collected, yes?”

“Most likely,” replied Groundshaker. “Good work so far, let’s keep up this routine and stick to the flight schedule filed with the tourism board.”

“You know, I am actually having a good time,” Cloudraker said aloud as he converted back to jet mode the instant Windmill finished his show of documenting the more interesting aspects of the terrain. “This was just what I needed.”

 

* * *

 

“I need this like I need a new T-cog,” muttered Fireball as she shifted in place. Consultation between Glyph, Vibes, and Groundshaker has resulted in modifications to the intended flight schedules, both to make it seem more like they were enjoying the holiday, and to make their observations less… observable. 

This meant that she was now standing in a painfully long queue to file the revisions, because the cybernetic beings managing tourism on the planet had somehow managed to perfect the red tape of bureaucracy while upgrading their civilization from organic to more sensibly mostly-mechanical forms. She couldn’t remember what they were called, and at this point, felt frustrated enough to not inquire, due mostly to the experience of waiting behind a loudmouthed team of Ilxian athletes. Their insistence on involving the entire building in their conversation meant that Fireball could not help but be aware of the promotional gig they were using as an excuse to spend some off-time making a small profit on Veras Centralus, among other petty details that threatened to push more important information out of her processor.

She tried to distract herself from the frustrating, obnoxious, memetic virus-like chatter that was threatening to overwhelm her audio processors. She counted the head-tendrils of the athletes. She looked for interesting patterns in the floor paneling. She tried to deduce whether the decorative flora was organic, artificial, or some kind of naturally-grown polymer-based autotrophic life. She traded sympathetic gazes with the beleaguered attendant at the desk, who seemed to loathe xis job as much as xis customers hated xim.

Eventually, xe managed to get the Ilxians on their way, and begin the process of filing the changes Fireball presented. Xis central optic focused on the work, while the smaller ancillary lenses shifted and scanned the lobby. The metal provided an interesting contrast with the soft tissue of xis lower face. Since xe was quietly punching in the data Fireball provided, she found it easy to distract herself further by examining xim.

Which is why she was able to see the reflection of an unfamiliar Cybertronian form in one of xis optics when it shifted to look at the newcomer. 

Every Autobot was familiar with the Seeker bodyframe, from its most notable examples among the uppermost ranks of the Decepticons, to those who simply adopted that type of body in a vain attempt to draw on its reputation. After the war’s end, Fireball had even come to know a few of those who remained on Cybertron. But she was fairly sure this was not one of them, unless he had changed his color scheme.

“Holy scrap,” the purple Decepticon said in a semi-hushed, almost reverent tone as he drew near with a wide grin on his face. He drew uncomfortably close, and leaned in for a ‘confidential’ whisper that Fireball was sure would’ve been audible throughout the entire lobby and down the hall. “I heard you were dead! How’d you do it, Skyfall?”

She felt frozen, and let the question hang in the air for far too long. The Decepticon’s expression shifted, into what she thought was puzzlement. At last, she found her voice. “I’m not—Skyfall was my brother. Did you…?”

“Oh, yeah, we—” the Decepticon’s optics narrowed into a tight, thin glow. He opened his mouth again, and paused with it hanging open. “We were kind of, you know, not really rivals, but? Opposite sides of the war, so. I’m kind of a gadget geek, I kept up with what the Bots were building.”

His tone was shifting, his speech rapid. Little things that Fireball had learned to analyze, that suggested he was anxious. Was he lying? Was he one of the scientists at the facility here? She supposed it was the likeliest explanation, but then why would he be hanging around the tourist area? Their intelligence suggested the Decepticons there would have kept themselves hidden, avoided advertising their presence on-planet. He was still talking, making some kind of excuses about his interest in Autobot weapons development. Behind her, the clerk finished up xis work, and handed her a confirmation receipt printed on some kind of disposable polymer sheet.

“I’m sorry, but, um,” she interrupted as she took the receipt and nodded to the worker, before looking back to the Decepticon. “What was your name?”

“Oh, of course,” he replied, making a show of tapping his helmet. “I’m Hotlink. So, what brings you out to VC, Firebolt?”

“Fire _ball_ ,” she corrected, and reminded herself of the excuse that had been devised in case anyone did inquire about her in relation to Skyfall. “It’s really just, well… Skyfall was always visiting here, and after he, you know. After that, I wanted to see what he liked about it, here. Try to get a little closer to him—we didn’t spend much time together.”

“Ahh, gotcha,” he said, giving her a little rap on the shoulder with his fist, that rang uncomfortably loud in her head. She tried not to let it show. “We’ve all got a lot of unpacking to do, after the war. Things to unload before we move on, right?”

After a moment, she mustered a “Yeah.”

Hotlink stood there grinning at her as if they were old friends. She simultaneously felt smaller and smaller, and more and more obvious and space-filling.

“So, um,” she gestured back towards the exit. “I’m here with some friends, I need to get back to—nice meeting you?”

“Oh, yeah, sure!” Hotlink said, waving her off and making back for the hallway he’d come from. She was at the doorway, before he turned around and called to her. “Say, you and Skyfall didn’t have another sibling, did you?”

She stopped, tempted to just flee out the door. Was this going to be some agonizing question about rebuilding her body, her transition? But there was no way out of this that wouldn’t cause more of a scene and threaten the mission. “No, why?”

“Ah, it’s just, well,” Hotlink paused, hand to his mouth. “Engineering styles, you know, they often run in a family, little details in common. I remembered seeing some stuff a long time ago, that always reminded me of Skyfall’s work. Some Bot named… ah, I can’t remember.”

“I’m sure it’ll come to you,” she said, and waved goodbye. “Have a nice time, maybe I’ll run into you again.”

“Likewise,” he replied, no longer looking in her direction.

She made sure she was well out-of-sight of the building before letting panic move her.

 

* * *

 

“What’s up with you?” Nightflight asked as Hotlink returned to the small rented conference room in the tourism board’s building. The Hedonians were keeping to their side of the long table, conferring over a data slate. They’d be at it for a good long while, his long experience ripping off aliens giving him an optic for the types to squabble with each other over details of a deal.

“Ah, it’s nothing much. I picked up some Cybertronian lifesigns on one of my scanners,” the Seeker replied, pulling a small many-antennaed device from subspace. “Thought I’d take a look.”

Nightflight didn’t like the sound of that. Anyone who wasn’t from their own facility being around was a potential complication in the sale, to say nothing of their current operations. But Veras Centralus was long used as a site for Autobot R&R, and had probably attracted a few Decepticon and NAIL tourists since then. It wasn’t as though Cybertron was worth staying on, by all accounts.

“Anyone we know?” he asked, against his better judgement.

“That’s the funny thing,” Hotlink replied, setting down backwards on a seat that wouldn’t have accommodated the kibble of his vehicle mode if used properly. “Turns out Skyfall had a sibling, mistook her for him. A twin, I guess.  Funny, huh?”

“Yeah, real funny,” replied Nightflight. “The bot’s dead. You think his ghost’s gonna be hanging around here or something?”

Hotlink chuckled.

“Anyway, you should report it to ‘Block when we get back,” Nightflight continued. 

“Why? She’s just, you know, a tourist.” Hotlink replied, boggling. “Skyfall was always faking like he was, she must have bought it and wants to see places he went. Some kind of kinship thing, right? I knew this grounder, he couldn’t do anything right until he fought the Bot who killed his junxie. Closure, or whatever.”

Nightflight stared for a moment. Engineers could be remarkably dense, downright idiotic when it came to anything outside of their work. 

“You have a glitch? Think,” he said, now whispering at almost a hiss. “If _Skyfall_  faked being a tourist, what’s keeping his split-spark from pulling the same act?”

“Huh,” was all Hotlink could manage. “Maybe… she _was_  acting kind of funny. I wonder if she was lying about _that_ , too?”

_Oh dear sweet Adaptus,_  Nightflight thought to himself, _dare I even ask?_

“...about _what_?” he pressed.

Hotlink stopped to think, rubbing his hand over his jaw. “You remember back on, what was it, Traujor, when we were in Gutcruncher’s unit?”

“How could I forget?” Nightflight groaned. “I ain’t never had to have so much of myself rebuilt. Those Autobot traps were fragging brutal.”

“Well, that’s the thing, I analyzed them, and they looked so much like Skyfall’s work, I dug into it back then,” Hotlink explained, “I found out there was an Autobot named… ah, I can’t remember. But I always figured they were related to Skyfall, but this bot, her name was Fireball.”

“And that wasn’t it, huh?” Nightflight replied. “Well, if you remember who it was, let me know. I’d like to return their warm hospitality, if I ever meet ‘em.”

He looked up, but Hotlink was already lost in fidgeting with another of his gadgets, his ever-present toolkit spread out across his lap. He was mumbling a series of names to himself, shaking his head after saying each one, if not in the very same instant.

“Ah, whatever,” Nightflight grunted.

 

* * *

 

Flareup was absorbed in her work at the table opposite the hastily-assembled communications suite. Most of the machines they were using had been brought in using some of the very same type of trick utilized by the Cybertronian whose traitorous acts brought their group to Veras Centralus, hiding mechanisms and components in the lining of other items. But that meant that most of what they needed had to be assembled after tearing open their luggage and its contents. The communications setup had been the priority, and now she and Fastlane had been left to piecing together what remained, while the others focused on the maps and keeping in touch with the three flyers. 

Fastlane’s hands moved as fast as his reputation would suggest his wheels did, though he took every opportunity he could find to complain about boredom. 

“Boredom’s good,” Flareup grumbled as she set a wire in place. “You see what I’m working with? I don’t want things to get exciting, right now.”

Fastlane’s optics rose from the schematics he was relying on as a guide to the assembly  of a sonic rifle, and his gaze settled on the explosives she was carefully piecing together. It was a familiar design used in demolitions, the kind of thing where individual components were harmlessly inert, but combined to explode powerfully when one mixed them together and introduced a detonator.

“Yeah,” he muttered, returning his attention to his own work. “Guess so.”

The truth of the matter, of course, was that Flareup was _very_  excited by her work, but she couldn’t let it show. She’d had lots of practice in that area, even hiding it from herself, at times. For a rescue worker, getting a thrill out of danger was bad enough, with the concern that she might give into the temptation to seek it out or let things get worse just to face a greater challenge. But actively enjoying destruction? She might as well walk up to the Mistress of Flame and confess to apostasy. 

As it was, she had to pretend that she wasn’t really enjoying herself at the prospect of blowing up parts of a dangerous secret weapons facility run by criminal leftovers of a terrorist cell from her people’s ancient homeworld of Cybertron. She had to focus on the mechanical side of it, and not the idea that she was part of a secret, informal unit performing espionage in preparation for a raid to take out the last remaining samples of a deadly weapon.

She had to ignore the thudding sound, jostling of the lock, and the abrupt slamming-open of the door as Fireball burst into the room, making Vibes, Groundshaker, and Fastlane jump to their feet with their weapons ready.

She couldn’t ignore Fireball’s yelp of, “We’ve got a _big_ problem!”

 

* * *

 

Fifteen kliks earlier, Fireball had been letting panic move her. She’d never been suited for combat, much less public interaction with others. There was just something a little off about her processors, something in her spark that differed even from Skyfall. She couldn’t express herself the way other Cybes did, and she couldn’t relate to some of the ways they expressed their own feelings, or their reactions to things she did or said. 

But, there’d been a war. A war so long that it outlived alien civilizations, that spread over numerous star systems and countless planets and planetoids. And she’d been good at improvising weapons, which meant that she eventually found her way into combat as part of a defined unit. So, alongside more mortal mechanisms, she’d been forced to invent some _coping_ mechanisms. 

One of those mechanisms had involved what might be called a character, a persona she adopted as if she was an actor reading from a script. The many vorns of combat had even given her a sort of “cue” for her performance: the feeling of panic, that a plan had gone pear-shaped due to enemy action. It wasn’t a feeling she’d had recently, with the end of the war and her retirement to civilian status.

Things going wrong meant needing to improvise, so in her brain module, Fireball became Jury-Rig again.

She circled around the side of the tourist board building. There, she pulled a security camera from its mounting on the wall. Here, she upended a trash receptacle and found some sticky organic foodstuffs, some sheets of thin metal and polymers that had been used to store goods. Another few steps and she pulled her tools from subspace, fingers moving as she walked almost automatically, focused on the work. Wires, circuits, audio receptors were pulled from the camera. A spare power source came out of her subspace, pieces fused together onto the polymer sheet with the metal torn into strips and used to seal connections with careful application of heat.

By the time she’d completed her walk around the building, she had a thumb-sized recorder barely wider than the two pieces of plastic that she’d joined together as casing. A bit of the flimsy metal and the organic foodstuffs, and she had disguised it as a piece of candy. She looped back inside the building’s lobby—and dropped it by the door she’d seen the Decepticon disappear through out of the corner of her optics. It stuck to the outside of the doorway, looking for all the world like something a non-mechanical alien had discarded carelessly.

Without stopping, she made her way down to a vending machine at the end of the same hall, purchased some fuel she barely looked at, and made her way back out while sipping on it, giving the employee at the desk a friendly wave with her free hand. 

“Jury-Rig” had pulled an act like this before, enough times to be confident in it. Decepticons and Autobots alike rarely thought organic garbage was worth looking through. She even had a preferred frequency, using antiquated broadcasting methods that anyone looking out for monitoring devices would mistake for something so beneath their notice as to be innocuous. It didn’t have much range, and she was forced to circle the building again seeking out the right spot to pick up on something more than static.

By the time she made it back to the upended garbage receptacle and started fixing it back up, she could hear the Decepticons chatting through the door. She’d missed the bulk of their conversation, and was only picking up the resolution of some argument or debate. There were other voices; it took her some close listening to guess at who they might be...

...but once she understood what they were talking about, she felt her fuel pump drop.

Panic moved her again, this time in a dead run back to the hotel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got another chapter of this out! Sorry if anyone has been expecting a regular update schedule. Unemployment somehow actually makes it harder to write; there's not enough distracting me to set the gears turning. Sharper-eyed readers might note that I recently went back and edited a little in the previous chapters, when I realized Artfire was missing from a scene where he ought to have been included.


End file.
